Running In

[Walenut]

The hand book states that the bike is run in by 1500 miles (916) when would you consider swapping to synthetic oil, at this mileage or nearer 2000?

[DAVE HARRIS]

By the time you have ridden 1500 miles with progressive increase of rpm and throttle untill you are using full throttle and hitting the rev limiter the engine will have fully bedded in I would use fully synthetic from the first service interval as most of the bedding in is done within 250-500 miles. there has been a problem in the states with rings not sealing on later bikes and that is probably due to too gentle running in and the bores not wearing correctly. the camshaft crankshaft and bearings bed in very quickly it is the piston ring to bore seal that is critical in modern engines. technicaly the bore has to have a surface that will retain oil at a molecular level (for piston ring lubrication) and make a gas tight seal with the rings.

I am gentle with a new engine for the first 250 miles then rev it high but with small throttle openings progressively increasing the throttle opening for the next 250 miles and then ride the bike normaly from there, I try to avoid track days untill the bike has done 1000 plus miles. this has worked on all our ducatis and even the high mileage 916 uses very little oil between services.

modern car engines are factory filled with synthetic oils and the first service is normally at 1 year or 10000 miles!!

dave

[Walenut]

Thanks for that Dave.

Steve

[Harv748]

Theres a little feature in this weeks MCN about running in a bike...continued next week also...might be of interest to you?

[Walenut]

Thanks Harv did have a look at it.

Steve

[deej]

thought you would have updated your avatar by now harv